Van Rooy

In 1906, Senator J. C. van Rooy, of the farm Koppieskraal in the Bethulie district, started his experiments to propagate a breed of sheep for slaughter lamb production: The requirements he set for this breed, were threefold: 1) The breed had to be strong and hardy to cope with regular droughts; 2) It had to be fertile in order to maintain a high percentage of production; It had to have an excellent conformation.

With these aims in mind he made use of a white "Blinkhaar Afrikaner" ram and eighty Rambouillet ewes. With the progeny of these the principle of inbreeding, coupled with severe selection, was applied. Later on, a polled Wensleydale ram was introduced in an effort to improve conformation. The present day Van Rooy sheep is still run mostly in the arid areas where survival and reproduction on natural grazing are essential for the economic production of meat.

Breed categories: hair (meat), fat-tailed / Distribution: South Africa, Australia